The Choice of Free Men
Fernando De Haro - Nicaragua has one of the most terrible dictatorships in Latin America, which has bloodily suppressed the protests there in 2018. It is raining in San José, the capital of Costa Rica.
At this time of year, it always rains after 1 p.m., but it pours more than raining as if the sky wants to clarify that it has no limits. And while it's pouring, H. makes rosaries with his big hands, stringing colorful beads on plastic thread.
H. is one of hundreds of political and religious exiles caused by the regime of Daniel Ortega and his wife, Rosario Murillo, who rule Nicaragua. It is one of the most cruel dictatorships in Latin America. A kind of Caribbean Stalinism.
H. was a parish priest in a medium-sized town when the 2018 protests began, repressed by the regime with the blood of more than 300 dead. The youth, peasants, and workers who took to the streets to demand freedom found refuge in many churches throughout the country. The Catholic Church became the only free voice in Nicaragua and paid for it with more than 700 attacks, with priests and bishops arbitrarily arrested and exiled, universities closed, and religious orders abolished. Even the nuns of Mother Teresa of Calcutta were forced to leave because they were accused of possessing weapons.
H. opened his parish, and his church literally became a field hospital: the wounded were laid on the pews and given first aid. Since then, H. has been subjected to intense torture: death threats, severe restrictions on his freedom of movement, and false accusations of sexual abuse. H. did not want psychological help, but he needs sleeping pills, in his nightmares, he returns to the bad days.
Why did he do it? He replied that he had no political intentions but that, as a priest, he could not sit still when people asked for help because they were being slaughtered. H. had been a good parish priest, a quiet priest, insignificant to power, until the struggle for freedom knocked on his door. Reality made him realize that being a priest was much more than he had thought.
As V. speaks, it is still not raining because she tells her story in the morning. She is a young woman, one of the leaders of the protest. She has been living in hiding since 2018 with a false identity. Until she had no choice but to flee Nicaragua. She suffers from anxiety and, despite her young age, has high blood pressure. Why did she do it? He says this out of conviction because you cannot live under a tyrant as if nothing were happening.
E. tells his story, it is two o'clock in the afternoon, and it has already started to rain. He was a senior official in the Ministry of Health in 2018. He refused to take part in the repression. They called him a traitor. They interned him in Chipote prison, one of the cruelest prisons in the world. They put him in a two-by-three-meter cell and tortured him mentally and physically. His liver is destroyed and he is in severe pain from being kicked in the testicles. Why did he do this? He says he could not remain silent in the face of a lying power that slaughters innocent people.
H., V., and E. were a good priest, a good student, and a good power official until reality knocked on their door in the form of abuse and mistreatment. Then came the flood: an outburst of energy of mysterious origin rooted in a value of unfathomable dimensions.
People only give up freedom when they lack self-respect. This article was published on ilsussidiario.net. Translation unrevised by the author. Download.
